


Attention Whore

by Marvelite5Ever



Series: That X-Force AU where the mercenaries like attention, the telepathekenetics have varying degrees of guilt complexes, and the genetically enhanced, nanoactive supersoldiers are almost constantly confused [1]
Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool (Comics), Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), X-Force (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Lots of Angst, M/M, Nathan Angst, Nathan fucks up, Nathan is, Nonlinear story format, This entire thing is a clusterfuck, Wade Angst, Wade fucks up, Wade is an attention whore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5056930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvelite5Ever/pseuds/Marvelite5Ever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deadpool wanted Nate's attention (undivided). </p><p>But Nate didn't have time for Deadpool—he only had time for saving the world or repairing the timestream. Therefore, if Deadpool wanted Nate to have any time for him, he needed to endanger the world and damage the timestream. That way Nate would <i>have</i> to have time for him. That way Nate would <i>have</i> to pay attention to him. If Deadpool endangered the world, Nate would have to think about him, chase after him, fight him, talk to him... </p><p>If Deadpool threatened the world, Nate wouldn't be able to <i>ignore</i> him. Nate wouldn't be able to <i>forget about</i> him. </p><p>Deadpool had always loved attention. It got to the point where he didn't care whether it was <i>positive</i> or <i>negative</i> just so long as he got it. </p><p>And if he orchestrated events so that he actually died for real after his attention-seeking stunt? Well, that was just a bonus. The cherry on top of the ice cream, if you will.</p><p>(Nathan does not agree with the above statement.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Attention Whore

**Author's Note:**

> This story ignores everything in Marvel canon after Cable & Deadpool #50, and takes place in a universe where the mutant situation wasn't so desperate (we're basically ignoring the whole “No more mutants” debacle), and there doesn't end up being the whole thing with Hope and Avengers vs. X-Men and the Phoenix Force and alllll that.  
> We're also probably ignoring like a ton of stuff.  
> Yep. We're ignoring it all. Hi-chaa!  
> The continuity is just really messed up. Don't think about it too hard, kay? 
> 
> I actually wrote this story a few months ago during the summer when I had copious amounts of freetime (which I know don't have because of school), but I couldn't quite get myself to post it...
> 
> But what with the new Deadpool & Cable comic, and the digital version of the first issue released a few days ago (which I haven't read, and probably won't be able to for a while, sadly - but damn am I excited!), I finally decided: What the hell? This story has already been written. It would be a shame to just leave it languishing in a folder on my computer, when someone out there might enjoy it, right?

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

It was bright and sunny on the day of Wade Wilson's funeral.

The sky was clear of the smoke that had been shrouding it for weeks. There was a blithe breeze. The sunlight was soft. The songbirds were singing. 

The entire world seemed to be celebrating Deadpool's death, rejoicing in the silencing of the Merc with a Mouth, his rampage of destruction and homicide put to an end. There were probably fireworks being fired off in all the major cities of the world. It was probably raining in all the driest deserts. Certainly many people were breathing easier, smiling more. 

Only one person was there to watch the undertaker lower the simple coffin into the ground and begin covering it with dirt, the headstone reading the name: Keith Goodchild. 

Nobody would be looking for Wade Wilson under a name like that. Ironic, given who was buried beneath it. But nobody would know. The name was normal, but not conspicuously so, as John Smith would be. 

The graveyard located in Western Canada was small, quiet. The trees and grass were lush, the roses blooming, flamingo petals and shark-tooth thorns. The area received rain often, and the loose dirt above the grave would settle, and then freeze come winter. The vines ran rampant, and soon the headstone would be mostly obscured, just another old grave-marker among many, all of them scattered about randomly without any sense of order. 

Wade's body would remain unviolated. 

And after all that Deadpool had done? There were definitely people out there who would dig up the mercenary's body to rip it apart—or try to get his heart beating again, so the could use him as a weapon.

“Guy didn't have too many friends, huh?” the undertaker grunted at the sole mourner, as the dirt he was shoveling thudded hollowly against the top of the coffin tucked six feet down in the ground. 

The mourner—a tall, sturdily built, white-haired man wearing dark sunglasses and a dark trench coat, hands in his pockets—kept his gaze on the coffin as it was covered up. His tone was reserved, quiet, hesitant. “He wasn't the... easiest... man to be friends with.” 

The undertaker grunted again. 

When the last of the dirt had been shoveled over the grave, the undertaker offered a quiet condolence and wandered off, leaving the mourner there to stare at the mound of freshly disturbed dirt shielding the coffin that lay six feet below. 

The man didn't cry. Didn't even shudder. He just stared, lips curved down in a troubled frown. 

Clenching his eyes shut, the man lifted his dark glasses just enough to rub his right hand over the jagged X over his right eye, as if the scars were hurting with a phantom ache.

With an inaudible sigh, the mourner let his sunglasses settle back down on the bridge of his chiseled nose, his hand finding his pocket again, his bright gaze behind the dark lenses flicking to the headstone with the faux name. 

“I'm sorry,” the man said, voice low. 

Parting words said, the mourner turned and left, walking away through the maze of pale headstones and dark, tangled vines. 

Not even once did he look back. 

There was no point in looking back. No point. Wade Wilson was dead. Permanently, this time. And Nathan Summers was a man of the future—he kept on moving forward, no matter what. He did not dwell on the past. 

But as he sat in the uncomfortable seat in the crowded passenger plane on his way back to the States, hours of waiting ahead of him, Nathan couldn't help but remember.

* * *

**_~Then~_ **

* * *

The syringe plunged into Deadpool's neck, the serum injected harshly into him. 

Wade released a startled breath, his swords, that a moment before had been aiming for Cable's throat only to have been blocked by the man's metal arm, clattered from from his grip as he staggered backwards. 

He fell to his knees on the edge of the roof, lurched forward and had to catch himself on his hands, head bowed. “Holy mother of _fuck,”_ he gasped in pain. The marred skin visible through the hole in his outfit where he'd earlier been shot through the chest shifted till the skin was smooth.

Cable watched him warily. He held a gun to the mercenary's head. 

After a minute of ragged gasping, Deadpool sat back on his haunches and carefully rolled off his mask, pulling off a glove and staring at the smooth skin of his hand before running his palm over the smooth skin of his face, then back through his hair, looking up Nathan with an expression like reverence. 

“You actually did it,” Wade breathed. 

Blood was trickling down the side of Nathan's face but he didn't bother to wipe it away. He stared at Wade, frozen. 

Wade was blond, and his hair stuck up in the front. With his skin smooth and unmarred, he looked so _young._

The pain of his past, no longer carved into his skin, was visible only in the darkness behind his bright eyes. 

The only thing that hadn't changed were those chestnut brown eyes. 

(Anyone else would have been struck that Wade was _handsome_ without the terrible marring of the cancer and scars; but not Nathan. Not when he'd always seen Wade's marred flesh as majestic evidence of how strong Wade was to have survived what he did, and to keep on surviving despite everything.) 

Wade laughed, pulling off his other glove and running both hands over his face in wonder. “You actually did it.” He whipped out a dagger, too fast to be seen. 

Before Nathan could so much as flinch, Wade had flicked the dagger across the back of his own hand, a straight line of red blooming and spreading. 

They both watched for several moments as the wound failed to heal before their eyes. 

Wade looked up at him again, grinning. 

Outrage surged in Nathan's chest. “IS _THAT_ WHAT THIS WAS ALL ABOUT?!” he demanded, keeping his gun trained on the mercenary while he gestured with the other hand at the demolished city spread out around them, flames leaping and devouring the buildings that hadn't yet collapsed, smoke billowing up and continuing to dark the sky. 

Killer robots and genetic experiments from the future were still running rampant, everything from Sentinels to cockroach soldiers, fighting heroes and slaughtering civilians. 

The tear in the time-space continuum was still open, a glowing blue rend in the sky. 

Nathan could hear the timestream screaming. 

Wade could be a genius when he wanted to be, and he'd rigged space-time rupture to _himself,_ so that the only way to close it was to kill him. 

Nathan's trigger finger shouldn't be hesitating. He shouldn't be wasting time trying to _talk_ to the lunatic (the beautiful, beautiful lunatic). But he _had_ to know. 

He had to know _why._

“This?” Wade asked, gesturing around him and shrugging as he got to his feet, seeming unconcerned about the gun that moved with him, staying trained in the center of his forehead. “Nah, this was only _partly_ about getting you to cure and kill me. Not the whole reason.” 

“Then what was the rest of the reason?” Nathan grit out. His face was pulled in unbridled fury, but his trigger finger wouldn't budge. 

Wade met his gaze and _smiled._

It sent shivers down Nathan's spine, because it wasn't a _crazy_ smile—it wasn't an _angry_ smile, or a _bitter_ smile, or a _wry_ smile, or a _humorless_ smile—

No, it was a _happy_ smile. A _content_ smile. 

It was a smile that did not belong on the backdrop of chaos and carnage. It was not the kind of smile that would be on the face of a madmen hellbent on destroying the world. 

But Wade _was_ crazy, and he _was_ destroying the world. 

But he wasn't angry. Why the hell would he try to destroy the world if he wasn't _angry?_

“I just wanted _this,”_ Wade said, gesturing between them and giving a sheepish shrug, meeting Nathan's gaze with veneration. 

“This...?” Nathan choked out, mouth dry. 

Wade tilted his head, that playful smile till teasing along his lips, lighting his eyes. “Your attention. For you to _look_ at me without _dismissing_ me.” Grinning, pleased in what he'd accomplished. 

Nathan's heart dropped straight down through his chest, landed in his gut and started rotting and rusting there. 

The metal hand holding the gun shook almost as much as his voice. “You didn't think there are _better _was to get my attention than going on a murdering _rampage_ and tearing a hole in the _timestream,___ Wade?!” 

Wade looked at him like he'd just said something foolish. “How _else_ was I supposed to get your undivided attention? The only things worthy of your attention are things that endanger the world. Speaking of,” he gestured behind him at the rend in space-time, “don't you need to do your world-saving thing and close that sucker up?” 

Nathan stared at the glowing blue tear that was getting larger by the minute. A huge, flying leviathan creature flew out of it, and he had _no_ idea what timeline _that_ had come from. 

“The only way to close it is to kill you,” Nathan said, shifting his gaze back to the mercenary. 

“Well _duh,”_ Wade snorted, rolling his eyes. “Firstly,” he held up a finger, “I had to link it to myself because I am my own link through time—hey, Zelda! Actually, now, it was like black voodoo blood magic or something with weird rules and something had be sacrificed, so I just sacrificed myself, cuz I can— _could_ —do that and still come back. But you probably know more about the process than I do, since you were following me and shit. 

“Secondly,” he held up another finger, “there's no point in living after this because everybody will hate me even _more_ than the already hated me. So this was my last stand, so to speak.

“And thirdly,” three fingers were raised, now, “if I didn't make it so the only way to close it was by killing _me,_ you would have found a way to close it by sacrificing _yourself.”_

Wade glared at him pointedly. 

Nathan's brain wasn't working. Subsequently, his trigger finger wasn't working, either. 

“Uhh, you should probably get to killing me, cuz the tear in the timestream is getting a little out of control and might permanently damage something irreparable,” Wade offered, glancing behind him to see Ultron from the future come blazing into the present, and start fighting with the Apocalypse that had already arrived. “It seems like the tear stretched into multiple different future timelines. New York City might take a while to recover from this destruction.” He looked back at Nathan sheepishly. “Oops?” 

Nathan looked stricken. Frozen in some unreadable emotion. 

“Uh, you shouldn't be hesitating,” Wade said, brow furrowing. “You should hate me by now and also have that compulsion to save the universe? Yeah?” 

Nathan vaguely, from what felt like a great distance, tried to tell his trigger finger to squeeze. 

The signal got lost somewhere and never made it to his hand. 

Wade's eyes widened. “Unless you _do_ still care about me! You _do,_ don't you?!” 

Nathan was outside his body, watching himself remain silent and motionless, and there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. 

“In that case, I'll save you from the painful decision, Priscilla,” Wade said, and suddenly _he_ was holding a gun, and he had the muzzle pressed up against his own throat. “I think I've hurt you enough, don't you?” Wade's smile was only sad where it touched his eyes.

_BANG!_

For a moment, Wade was suspended there, eyes blank, blood and brain-matter in his blond hair. 

And then his dead body started falling backwards. 

Nathan jolted back into his body just in time to reach out a hand and catch the mercenary's corpse before it could fall off the skyscraper. 

In the background, there was a blinding flash of blue and the rend in space-time snapped closed, all the time-misplaced people, creatures, and robots disappearing. 

But the _death_ remained. The _destruction_ remained. 

New York City was a vision of apocalypse, burning and smoking, glowing red and shrouded with black. 

Nathan lowered Deadpool's dead body to the surface of the roof, standing back up in time to see Captain Marvel zoom by. 

He spotted Iron Man. Spider-Man. Spider-Woman. Hawkeye. The Hulk. The Human Torch. Those were good signs.

Nathan stared down at the dead body of the man who'd once been his best friend, realizing numbly that this had all been nothing but a game to the merc.

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

Nathan stared out the plane's window. Below the plane was a covering of gray clouds that shrouded the earth. For the people down there, it was overcast. 

But up in the plane, it was sunny, and the sky was starting to turn orange on the horizon as the sun lowered. 

Nathan was six feet and eight inches tall, broad-shouldered and muscular—he barely fit in the plane seat, and it was an uncomfortable squeeze. 

The married couple sitting next to him regarded him with wariness and fear and tried not to look at him. The husband, who was the one sitting next to Nathan, leaned away from him as far as he could towards his wife. 

But it wasn't just them. The people sitting behind him, in front of him, across the aisle from him—they were all agitated by his presence. His huge form, his long coat, his dark gloves, his dark sunglasses. 

He missed being able to fly with his telekenesis and the gravimetric field. He missed the Infonet more than he missed actually having telepathy.

He missed Wade more than he thought he would. 

He hadn't actually expected to miss Wade at _all,_ after everything the Merc with a Mouth had done. He had the feeling that he _shouldn't_ be missing Wade; that he was possibly the only person in the world that felt any inkling of mourning for Deadpool. 

There hadn't been time to think about what had happened—to process it—before Wade had been buried, since Nate had been so busy dealing with the aftermath of Wade's destruction and seeing that Wade _was_ buried, and that nobody would know where. 

But now that he had moments to spare, he could finally process what had happened, could try to figure it out and _understand_ it. 

Why Deadpool had done what he did. What it was that he truly felt for the mercenary. 

Yes, Deadpool had been crazy. Yes, Deadpool's mind had worked differently. Yes, Deadpool had been annoying. Yes, Deadpool's morals had been questionable. Yes, Deadpool had killed, sometimes with reason, sometimes without. Yes, Deadpool had tried to destroy the world. 

But Wade could also be a genius, and could find solutions to problems that should have been _impossible_ for there to be any way to solve in the first place. (He was so much smarter than he pretended to be.)

Wade had talked a lot—all the time, really—but Nathan had found it _endearing,_ somehow, and Wade's hollow, gravelly, Demi Moore rumble had had a way of making Nathan feel warm, like his heart wasn't half made out of metal. 

Wade had been a better man than he or anyone else had given him credit for. He'd actually possessed a fair amount of conscience, especially for a mercenary. 

Wade had been _deadly_ in the most stunning, chaotic way. 

And when Wade had started endangering the world, Nathan had been so _angry._ (Angry at Wade for trying to destroy the world, angry at Wade for making him have to fight him, angry at Wade because he was _enjoying_ it, and he wished he _wasn't_.)

But now Nathan couldn't help but think about how few civilian casualties there'd actually been—how Deadpool had started a fight with the superheroes of New York (and held his own against them) first, so that civilians started getting evacuated from the battle zone, before he'd even ripped the tear in the time-stream, and how the tear had started out small at first and grew gradually, allowing for more civilians to be evacuated in a growing radius, so most of them wouldn't be harmed. 

He couldn't help but think how no superheroes had been killed, despite the fact that Deadpool had definitely had some opportunities to lop off some heads. 

He could help but think how Wade wasn't angry or bitter—he was just... 

Nathan recalled Wade's words, from their conversation at the bar in Intercourse, Pennsylvania, after Wade had chased him across dimensions to save him and after Nathan had fixed his brain—the part of the conversation where Wade had supposedly been talking about his father, but really seemed to be talking about himself.

 _“Yeah, he hit—a rough patch—after that... started actin' up... maybe to get attention. I don't know—maybe just to_ feel... _something...”_

And Nathan had the sinking feeling that all the destruction Wade had caused, all the deaths, that they had been _his_ fault. _His_ responsibility. 

He knew Wade's brain didn't work right. He knew that Wade thrived on attention. Wade was like a dog, taking any sign of attention as affection and encouragement to do more of whatever behavior had gotten him the attention. 

And, Nathan realized, he'd done the exact _opposite_ of what he _should have _done, regarding Wade.__

Wade had been trying to be better, and Nathan had ignored him, too busy trying to save the world. 

Hissing a breath through clenched teeth, Nathan leaned forward, face in his hands. 

The man next to him squeaked and tried to lean away. 

Nathan ignored the man in favor of trying to remember when his mistake had started.

* * *

**_~Then~_ **

* * *

It had been a few months since Cable's death and Providence's destruction, and Wade was trying to get his hero on and _keep_ it on. 

Which was why, when the news came on the TV that the X-Mansion was attacked by a hoard of Sentinels, Deadpool headed on over with his old teleporter belt he'd dug out of storage from his messiah run, and then had had Weasel fix. 

So that was how he ended up teleporting into the middle of a battle with huge, purple robots, armed to the teeth with explosives, a couple virulent cans of spray paint, and a couple limited edition katanas made out of titanium cores with adamantium sheaths, immediately beginning to lay waste to the huge robots. 

_“That's_ for attacking us mutants!” Deadpool yelled, cutting a hole into the back of a sentinel's head and stuffing explosives into it, flipping in a tuck off the robot just before its head exploded and it crashed backwards into another one of the robots. 

Deadpool landed on another Sentinel's arm, running up it to spray it in the face with the spray paint, melting a the robot's face off and then slashing apart the mechanics within. “And _that's_ for your ridiculous color schemes! I mean, indigo and violet, seriously?! Purple is Hawkeye's _thang,_ stop copying!”

“Deadpool, what are you doing here?!” Cyclops yelled at him as he blasted one of the Sentinels. 

“Helping out my fellow X-Men, of course!” Deadpool said cheerfully, running up a Sentinel's leg to stab it in the back of the knee, causing its leg to buckle, the giant robot falling to its knees. _“Damn_ but I love these swords! Love love _love_ these swords!” He used the swords to climb up the Sentinel's thigh, and hack into the robot's back, slipping inside to deliver hell to the machine's wiring. 

“Huh, these things aren't really putting up much of a fight,” Deadpool noted as he jumped out of the shut-down robot, only to see Wolverine, who'd been hacking at a Sentinel with his adamantium claws, get tossed aside and zapped by a Sentinel's eye-lasers. 

“Wolvie!” Deadpool exclaimed, running over and spraying the Sentinel's ankle with the spray paint, the metal eroding away quickly and the Sentinel crumbling forward. The robot would have landed on top of Wolverine, had Deadpool not run over and grabbed his burnt pal and teleported them away. 

They both set down several feet away, and Wolverine almost got blasted by another Sentinel before Deadpool pulled him out of the way. 

“What the hell, these things are totally avoiding zapping me!” Deadpool exclaimed, pushing Wolverine out of the way of another Sentinel blast. 

“It's cuz yer not a mutant, ya ding-dong!” Wolverine growled, flesh healing back enough for him to shake off Deadpool's grip and avoid the robot's blasts on his own. 

“Wait, these things don't zap non-mutants?” Deadpool asked, standing there and scratching his head as the X-Men fought around him—Cyclops doing his eye-blast thing, Storm doing her lightning thing, Shadowcat doing her phasing-through-electric-circuits thing, Marvel Girl doing her telekenesis thing, Wolverine doing his snikting thing, Beast doing his monkey-cat thing, Nightcrawler doing his teleporting thing, Iceman doing his cool thing (literally), Emma Frost in her super-sexy diamond form doing her badass thing, the whole deal—and the Sentinels never once went after the mercenary doing his incredibly destructive thing. 

“But I destroyed some of them!” Deadpool said indignantly. “And I have mutated genes!” 

“Sentinels're built to detect _X-genes,”_ Wolverine growled down at him, clawing up a Sentinel and shredding it open. “Now are ya here t'help or not?!” 

“Huh,” Deadpool said, leaping back into the fray, adamantium-sheathed katana and highly-corrosive spray paint in his hands. “So why don't you ask the Avengers for help whenever these guys attack, then, if these things won't go after the Avengers? Cuz I seem to have a _huge_ advantage, here!” 

Seriously, the Sentinels were pretty much ignoring him as he hacked them to pieces. 

“Kinda takes the fun out of it, though, fighting enemies that won't fight you back,” Deadpool mused, slicing through the neck of a Sentinel and then kicking its head off its shoulders, only for the head to be blasted apart in the air by a high-powered plasma rifle with a loud _PATOOM!_  
“Hey, I know the sound of that gun!” Deadpool exclaimed, the eyes of his mask going round as he leapt off the shoulders of the Sentinel, flipping in the air before landing in a crouch, spring back up to his feet and flying-tackle-hugging a certain Nathan Dayspring Askani'what Ah-choo Excuse Me 'Priscilla' Summers. “NATE! You're back!” 

“Not now, Wade,” Cable said distractedly, turning to shoot the Sentinel that had just blasted the spot where Cable had been standing before Deadpool had flying-tackle-hugged him out of the way. “We're in the middle of a fight.” 

“But you're back!” Deadpool said joyfully, running up another Sentinel to try and spray it in the face with the virulent spray paint, only to find that the canister was mostly empty. “And you're alive! Like, not dead like I thought you were!” he said, cutting open the back of the Sentinel's head, strapping an explosive to the spray acid canister and dropping it down inside the robot, running across its arm to jump onto another Sentinel as the other one broke down from getting torn apart and corroded from the inside. 

“Yes, I'm alive,” Cable said, shooting up a couple of the huge, purple robots. 

“Then why'd you pretend to be dead so long?!” Deadpool demanded, tone petulant as he stabbed the Sentinel in the eyes, twisting his swords. “And why are these things trying to kill you if you don't have your telepathy and telekenesis anymore?” 

“I'm still a mutant,” Cable said, dodging one of the Sentinel's laser blasts, rolling between the robot's legs and shooting it in the back. “I still have an X-gene.” 

“It's not an ex-X-gene?” Deadpool asked, parkouring over onto another Sentinel, cutting a hole in the back of the robot's head and stepping inside. “Ooh, lotsa wires in here! What do they always do in the movies again? Don't cut the red one, right? Hm. When they say 'red,' do they mean the 'scarlet red' or the 'vermillion' one? Nnngg. But then again, who wouldn't wanna be ver' rich, right? _Hnng.”_

The Sentinel Deadpool had gone inside stopped moving abruptly, sparks spurting out of the hole in the back of its head, before it started moving again. 

“Who invited Deadpool again?!” Shadowcat demanded, phasing so the Sentinel wouldn't step on her. 

_“Wade!”_ Cable barked, rolling out of the way of the robot's other foot. 

“Sorry!” came Deadpool's voice from inside the robot's head. “I've almost got this! Ouch. Give me another parsec...” 

“A parsec is a measure of _distance,_ not _time!”_ Beast said in exasperation as he leapt off a Sentinel that Deadpool's robot had just crashed into. 

“Oh, I think I got it now!” came Deadpool's voice, as the Sentinel's eyes started lighting up, about to fire. 

“Don't got it!” Iceman said warningly, sliding by on his ice ramp, turning abruptly to avoid the robot's eyes. “You really _don't got it!”_

“Wade, _careful!”_ Cable barked, grabbing Marvel Girl and pulling her behind the arm of a felled Sentinel, out of the way. 

And then the Sentinel's eyes went off, blasting down another Sentinel that was about to grab Storm. 

“Aha! I _told_ you guys that I got this!” came Deadpool's whoop of exhilaration, as he began using the Sentinel he was driving to attack the other Sentinels. “Kaijus watch out! I've got my own Jaeger, now! Ha ha ha fucking ow! Oh hey, that rhymed, wow! _Yeow!”_

The X-Men could only retreat out of the way and watch in bewildermint as the Sentinel Deadpool was driving began punching and kicking the other robots in a very un-Sentinel-esque fashion. Deadpool even made the robot he was somehow driving grab another Sentinel in a chokehold and twist its head off, like breaking a neck, before picking the shortcircuited robot up and spinning with it, smashing it into another one of the robots. 

_“That's_ for Yancy!” Deadpool yells as he makes quick work of the rest of the robots—not that there were all that many left. “And _that's_ for Pentecost! And his co-pilot that I can't remember the name of! Did that co-pilot even _have_ a name?! And _this_ is for Mako and Raleigh, even though they didn't die!” 

“What the hell is he talking about?” Cyclops demanded, exasperated. 

“It's best not to try and figure it out,” Cable said wryly. 

“A more important question is: how is he _doing_ that?” Beast asked, scratching his head as he watched the Sentinel Deadpool was driving tear off the arm of one of the other robots and then use the arm to hit in the face so hard it fell to the ground with a heavy _CRASHH!_ that the X-Men could feel in their bones. “That shouldn't be possible for the Sentinels to move like that!” 

“And _that's_ for...” came Deadpool's voice as he felled the last Sentinel, “your ugly face... stupid, disgusting... Kaijus... don't eat Canada, noo... doesn't taste like... maple syrup... really...” 

And then the Sentinel Deadpool had somehow taken control off dropped to its knees, and then fell face forward onto the ground with a resounding _CRASHH!_

“How did he do that?” Beast asked again, leaping and bounding over to the Sentinel like a furry blue cross between a gorilla and a lion, climbing on top of it to look down into the hole in the back of its head. “How did he... _oh._ Oh my stars and garters.” 

Marvel Girl, who'd just brushed through Beast's brain to see through his eyes, gasped and stumbled, catching herself on Scott's shoulder. “Oh _god...”_ she breathed, clenching her eyes shut and shaking her head. 

“What is it?” Iceman asked, about to skate over there to see when Wolverine grabbed his arm to keep him there, sniffing the air. 

“I don't suggest it, kid,” Wolverine said gruffly. 

Cable glanced at them with a frown before striding over and climbing up the Sentinel to join Hank, blinking as he looked down into the Sentinel's head. 

Because there was Deadpool, suspended in the cavity of the robot's brain with various wires sticking out of his head and body. Some of the wires were sparking, and Deadpool's blood was dripping audibly onto the metal of the inside of the Sentinel's face. 

“So _that's_ how he did it...” Beast said, voice slightly faint. “Though that still begs the question how he was able to connect his nervous system to the Sentinel's electric current...” 

“Wade...” Cable sighed, dropping down into the cavity and beginning to remove the wires from Deadpool's body, wincing slightly as he discovered how deep Deadpool had stabbed them into himself.  
As Deadpool's body slumped forward once enough of the wires were removed, Cable caught him, carefully extracting the rest before checking the mercenary's pulse.

There was none. 

Shaking his head, Cable lifted Deadpool's body over his shoulder and climbed out of the Sentinel, jumping down to the ground and walking over to the X-Men, Beast following beside him. 

“Why would he do that?” Beast asked, confused, even as the other X-Men looked varying degrees of startled at the sight of Deadpool's limp, bloody body. 

Cable set Deadpool's body down on the ground, before turning to survey the damage the Sentinel's had done to the Xavier Institute. 

There had been significant damage to the grounds, but the mansion itself hadn't been touched, which was fortunate. They'd have to deal with all the broken Sentinels, though. 

Deadpool coughed as he came back to life, startling Iceman, who squeaked. 

“That. Was. _Awesome,”_ Deadpool said roughly, voice rasping as he sat up, rubbing his head where there were now holes in his mask, revealing small amounts of scarred skin. A grin stretched the mask as he turned his head to look over at Cable. “Did ya see that? I went total Jaeger on their asses!” Deadpool gave a slightly manic sounding giggle. “And they said you _had_ to have _two_ people to handle the load, bah!” 

“Well, it _did_ kill you,” Cable pointed out. 

_“Temporarily,”_ Deadpool said, waving a hand dismissively as he pushed himself to his feet, readjusting his mask. “And _Death_ thought it was _cool.”_

“Wait, you _died?”_ Shadowcat asked, eyes wide. 

“I got a healing factor, kinda like his,” Deadpool explained, gesturing at Wolverine, “except _better.”_

Wolverine narrowed his eyes at the mercenary. 

“Don't try hooking yourself up to robots at home and/or on your own, kids!” Deadpool said, waving a finger at Shadowcat and Iceman. “Leave it to the professional immortals!” 

Meanwhile, Cable had turned back to Cyclops, talking and gesturing at the felled Sentinels around them. 

“Nate!” Deadpool said, bouncing over and leaning on the larger man's metal arm. “Naaaaate! Wasn't that awesome? Huh? Huh? Because that was really fucking awesome, you gotta admit! Hey, how long have you been up and about since Providence? Why didn't you drop by to see me and let me know you weren't dead? I thought you were dead! You had a fucking funeral and they built you a fucking statue and Cyclops was there too he can verify! Everybody thought you were dead!” 

“I'm sorry, Wade,” Cable said, giving the mercenary a somewhat annoyed, somewhat apologetic look. “I've been otherwise occupied.” 

“And you thought it was funny to let us all grieve for you, huh?!” Deadpol demanded, before glancing over at Cyclops, the white eyes of his mask widening as he turned back to Cable. “Nate, _how long have the X-Men known?!_ You went to them first, didn't you?! And why didn't you crash your own funeral? That would've been hilarious!” 

Cable sighed. “Wade, not right now.” 

“We need to figure out where the Sentinels came from,” Cyclops said in a serious tone, interrupting Wade's thoughts before they could reach his mouth. 

“Isn't it the usual family?” Deadpool asked, shrugging. “Either that guy or his wife or his daughter or his son or something? Second niece twice removed?” He waved a hand. “Oh, what's their faces again? Or hey!” He brightened, like he'd just gotten a revelation. “Maybe it's the crazy Master Mold thingy!” 

“It's none of your business,” Cyclops said, tone clipped as he glared through the visor at the mercenary. “This is _X-Men_ business.” 

“I was kind of an X-Man when you guys kind of recruited me to go after Nate!” Deadpool said, eyes of his mask narrowing as he pointed a finger at Cyclops's chest. “You guys gave me a uniform and everything!” 

“You were never an X-Man,”Cyclops said bluntly. “We did think we were working together, but then you betrayed us and lobotomized my son.” 

“Hey, he _asked_ for it!” Deadpool said, huffing and crossing his arms as Cyclops glared at him further, the edges of his visor skittering with traces of bright scarlet. “Like, literally—he verbally _told me to!_ And then I saved his life afterwards, which was more than _you_ did for him!”

Cyclops looked murderous, fists clenched. 

“I know, Wade,” Cable said, stepping in front of Cyclops as he faced Deadpool, effectively separating them, putting his hands on Deadpool's shoulders. “And I'm very grateful to you. But right now my dad and I are discussing tactics for approaching this new Sentinel situation. It was nice of you to drop by and help with the Sentinels, but that's all the fighting we'll be doing for a while. We've got it from here, Wade,” he said, letting go of the mercenary's shoulders. “You can go home.” 

“But I can help!” Deadpool protested, uncrossing his arms to gesture as he spoke. “The Sentinels don't detect me—they'll never see me coming!” 

“The X-Men have got it from here,” Cyclops said tersely as he stepped out from behind his son, still sending powerful I-really-don't-like-you vibes the merc's way. 

“But—!” Deadpool started to protest, only to break off as Cable reached out to squeeze his shoulder, smiling slightly. 

“Tell you what,” Cable said. “I'll call you if we need your help, alright? But for now you should go home, Wade.” 

“Fine,” Deadpool muttered, pulling away. “I get it. Don't call you, you'll call me, an' all that. I'll just go back to my apartment and watch _Golden Girls_ reruns for the seven hundredth and eighty-ninth time.” 

Deadpool waved a hand listlessly over his shoulder, singing, “You said you gotta be up in the morning, gonna have an early night, and you're starting to bore me, baby, why'd you only call me when you're high?” as he fiddled with his belt, before teleporting away with a popping sound. 

Cable stared after him for a moment, frowning slightly, before turning to the approaching Beast. 

“I think, if we can find an undamaged computer chip in one of the Sentinel's motherboards, then I should be able to track their location,” the scientist said, looking down at a piece of circuitry he was fiddling with. “This one's a goner, but if we can find a Sentinel that hasn't had it's head hacked apart too savagely... as difficult as that might be, what with Wolverine and Deadpool having been heavily involved...” 

Several yards away, Wolverine snorted and waved a hand dismissively in a rather rude fashion. There might have been a single, certain finger involved.

Cable's mind was already working on trying to figure out who was responsible for the attack, what their motives were, and what their next move would be, all thoughts of Wade Wilson pushed aside to deal with later.

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

Regret coiled in Nathan's gut, heavy and hot.

But that was nothing he wasn't used to. He carried so many regrets, so many deaths, with him. He shouldered those burdens every second of every day, and Wade was not going to be the straw that broke his back.

Maybe he should have tried harder, with Wade. Maybe he should have kept an eye on him, tried to help him. Maybe he should have allowed Wade to help. 

Maybe he shouldn't have turned Wade away when the mercenary came to him seeking guidance.

But there was nothing he could do about it now.

* * *

**_~Then~_ **

* * *

Wade didn't even hear how the Sentinel thing went from Nate—he had to hear about it on the TV, and the news had probably gotten everything almost entirely wrong, anyway. Hopefully none of the X-Babies had died, but then again, who outside of the X-Men would care, anyway? 

Deadpool was still working with Agency X, taking mercenary and thievery jobs, and nothing remained quiet in the mercenary world. So Deadpool heard the rumors that the mutant assassin squad X-Force had started up again, and it sure sounded like it was being headed by Cable, and that Domino, Boom-Boom, Cannonball, and Warpath were involved. No rumors indicated that Siryn was still part of the team—maybe she'd gotten out. Good for her. 

It wasn't that hard for Deadpool to find their super-secret X-Force base. (Super-secret his fine ass.) 

“Nate!” he called, dropping in on them, feeling a surge of pride as even Domino looked startled. “'Sup?! I haven't seen you in, like, forever! Where've you been? How'd the Sentinel thing go?” 

“The Sentinel thing went fine,” Cable said, recovering quickest. 

“What's _he_ doin' here?” Cannonball asked Cable in annoyance, even as Domino rushed Deadpool, pushing the mercenary up against the wall and pressing a knife against his neck. 

“What are you doing here?” she hissed at him, gaze furious. “How did you find this place?” 

“Whoa, whoa, I just wanted to drop by and say hi,” Deadpool said, the eyes of his mask widening as he raised his hands against the wall next to him. “I wanted to know how you and Nate were doing! Well, okay, mostly to make sure Nate hasn't sacrificed himself _again,_ but it's nice to see that you're okay, too.” 

_“How did you find us?”_ Domino repeated, pressing the knife harder against his neck. 

“Hey, don't cut my suit!” Deadpool protested. “No matter how much sewing I do, I still can't learn to enjoy it! As for how I got here—c'mon, Dom, _really?”_ One of the eyes of his mask was larger than the other, meaning he was probably raising one eyebrow beneath the mask. “Like you don't think I'd have the skills to track you guys? Don't worry, though, there's no-one with me, I wasn't followed, and there probably aren't any other people besides you and I who know Nate well enough to predict where he'd set up his super-secret mutant assassin club.” 

Domino looked very much like she wanted to slit his throat, but Cable said, “Let him go, Dom. He's not here to cause any harm.” 

“He causes harm even when he doesn't _mean_ to!” Domino huffed, gesturing at him even as she slid her knife back into her belt and stepped back, letting Deadpool away from the wall. 

“She frayed my costume, didn't she,” Deadpool whined as he rubbed at the neck of his costume. 

“Would you like me to deal with him?” Warpath asked Cable, the warrior cracking his knuckles as he glared at Deadpool. 

“That would be unnecessary, and highly detrimental to our efforts to remain clandestine,” Cable said. 

“As in: we'd destroy way too much stuff,” Deadpool translated knowingly. 

“Wade,” Cable said flatly, looking at him. “Why are you _really_ here?” 

“I already told you! Weren't you listening?!” Deadpool said, throwing out his arms. 

Cable just kept staring at him. 

Deadpool folded his hands behind his back, looking down and kicking at the floor. “Okay, fine, so I was wondering if I could join your X-Force group?” 

“What?!” exclaimed Cannonball. 

“No way,” Domino said flatly. 

“I am _not_ working with him!” Boom-Boom exclaimed, crossing her arms. 

Warpath didn't say anything, though he didn't look especially pleased by the idea. 

“Wade...” Cable sighed. 

“What?!” Deadpool demanded, gesticulating frustratedly. “This is a mercenary group for mutants, and I'm a mercenary with mutated DNA!”

“We don't kill people for _money,”_ Cannonball ground out. “We do what we _have_ to do to ensure the survival of the mutant race.” 

“Look, I may not actually _be_ a highfalutin _mutant_ with an _X-gene,”_ Deadool snapped, “but I've got a _healing factor_ like _Wolverine_ —that I actually _got_ from Wolverine—and what with the state of my skin, people _think_ I'm a mutant—when they don't think I'm a _burn victim_ —but either way people still treat me with the same _hate_ and _fear_ that you mutants get, and I still get chased after by corporations who want to _experiment_ on me or turn me into their own personal _weapon_ —except that, unlike you _mutants_ and your pretentious _clique,_ I don't get a group to run to for understanding and a safe haven. So from my view, a lot of mutant problems pertain to _me,_ as well!” 

Or at least, that's what he'd _probably_ have said—he _hated_ pity, but sometimes playing the Pity Card could be beneficial when dealing with secret saps like Cable and Domino, and if that got him on the team then it would be totally worth it—but he got cut off right after saying: “people _think_ I'm a mutant—”  
“People _thinkin'_ you're a mutant don't _make_ you a mutant,” Cannonball pointed out, crossing his arms and glaring. 

“But I'm _bored_ and I want to do something that helps people!” Deadpool protested, changing tactics. “And your mutant-only policy is totally racist!” 

“Aren't you working with Agency X?” Domino said, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yes,” Deadpool answered. “But you'd be _stunned_ at how much downtime we have! And I haven't gotten any exciting missions since that one at the Savage Land!” 

“This isn't something that we're doing for _fun,_ Deadpool,” Boom-Boom said, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “This is a _responsibility.”_

“I can be responsible!” Deadpool protested. 

There were some snorts and eyerolls in response to that. 

“I _can!”_ Deadpool insisted, pouting.

“Wade, you're practically allergic to responsibilities,” Domino said dryly, arms crossed. 

“And what's to keep you from betrayin' us as soon as someone _pays_ you to?!” Cannonball demanded. 

“Because...” Deadpool said, trailing off, because he'd have to tell the truth, the real reason that he wanted to join—that he wanted to join because _Nate_ was there, and that he would _never_ betray Nate, because he _cared,_ dammit. He cared... 

“I wouldn't!” Deadpool said instead, indignantly. “I may be a scumbag, but I'm not _that_ much of a scumbag.” 

“Yeah, Ah'm sure,” Cannonball said dryly. 

“I'm not! Right, Nate?” Deadpool turned to Cable, eyes begging behind his mask. “Right?” 

“This is a waste of time,” Warpath grunted in anger and impatience. “We have better things to be doing.” 

“I'd like to talk with Deadpool alone, please,” Cable said, turning to his X-Force team. “If you would all go into the other room and review the blueprints for our next mission, I'll deal with this.” 

Their was some muttering and grumbling, some glares thrown back Deadpool's way, but X-Force filed out of the room, closing the door behind them. 

And then it was just Wade and Nathan. 

“C'mon, Nate, _please?”_ Deadpool asked, even going so far as to clasp his hands together and widen his eyes—never worked with anyone when they saw his real face, but sometimes it worked when he had his mask on. “I'll be good, I promise!” 

Nathan sighed, threading a hand back through his white hair as he looked at the mercenary. “You know I trust you, Wade,” he said, “but the rest of X-Force doesn't. This team needs to trust one another for us to be able to carry out these missions, and letting you join would cause too much dissent in the ranks.” He paused slightly, before adding, “That, and this is a well-balanced team right now, Wade. There simply isn't another role that needs to be filled. Anyone else would be... unnecessary.” 

Deadpool wilted, his hands falling limp to his sides, knees bent, shoulders slumped, head down. 

“Wade,” Nathan said, “when I need you're help, I'll _ask_ for it.” 

“Yeah, 'course,” Deadpool said, straightening as he turned his back, waving a hand flippantly over his shoulder. “I'll just show myself out. Don't worry—I won't tell anyone where your super-secret mutant assassin squad base is.” There was a note of humor in his voice as he added, “Not even under pain of torture, or under bribery for lots and lots of money!”

Deadpool leapt up and disappeared into the rafters, his gravelly Demi Moor voice fading away as he went, singing softly but brightly (hollowly): “Objection, I'm tired of this triangle, got dizzy dancing tango...” 

Nathan stared after him till his voice had become inaudible, before turning and striding to join the rest of his team, an unpleasant feeling coiling in his stomach that he staunchly ignored.

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

Nathan had ignored his gut feeling, and the world had paid the price. 

He should have kept a better eye on Wade. He should have encouraged Wade to keep trying to be better, because of course Wade would fall back into his darker habits, otherwise. Wade's mind worked differently, and he too easily jumped to the wrong conclusions. 

Nathan _should have done things differently._

Not that these realizations helped him any, now. 

Realizing what he'd done wrong only mattered when he had a second chance to do things _right_ —but there'd be no second chance with Wade this time. 

Wade—Nathan's best friend—was dead. And it had been Nathan's own fault.

* * *

**_~Then~_ **

* * *

Cable never called. 

He saved the world from this, saved the world from that, almost died to save the world here, sacrificed himself to save the world there, came back to life to save the world again. 

He never called Deadpool to ask for help. He never called Wade to say: “Hey, how've ya been, buddy?”

So Wade watched Cable's exploits on the news (he really looked rugged on there), and Deadpool heard about Cable's exploits from sources who'd heard them from sources who'd heard them from sources who'd heard it from the source. (Wade figured the rumors were probably more accurate than the news.)

Sometimes Deadpool ended up turning up at one of Cable's world-saving parties by accident, and tried not to feel bitter when Nathan glanced right over him without seeing him. 

Wade tried to tell himself he shouldn't be bitter. Tried to tell himself he didn't care about stupid Nathan Fucking Summers, who really shouldn't look so hot while saving the world, all bloody and bruised and beat up and white-haired and muscular and rugged—Nathan Fucking Summers, who really shouldn't still be turning up in Wade's fantasies, who shouldn't make Wade's heart pound, his stomach flip-flop, and his palms sweaty every time he thought about him—Nathan Fucking Summers, who really shouldn't still be a voice inside Wade's head urging him to be better, who really shouldn't still make Wade's emotions twist into inexplicable knots; who really, really shouldn't make Wade's heart leap and skip whenever he looked over at the merc, and who really fucking seriously shouldn't make Wade's heart feel all chewed up and spit out every time he had a chance to maybe say a word to him but didn't. 

And Wade tried to be better, he really did. Tried to be the hero. Tried to accept only the moral merc jobs. 

Nobody gave a fuck what Wade tried to do. Nobody believed he could change. Nobody wanted him on their superhero teams. Especially not Nathan Fucking Summers. 

But hey, Wade knew Cable was busy. All that world saving he had going on. His mind was probably constantly working on five different plans for each of the next apocalyptic events the world would be facing. Wade knew Cable had no time to waste, and that he considered Wade to be a waste of time. 

Wade just didn't know how _not_ to be a waste of time. 

But hey, nobody gave a fuck what he did, so he stopped trying to stick to the good side and did some more morally questionable jobs, killed lots of people who probably didn't need to get killed but had been in the way, or had annoyed him, or had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time (nobody hears about things when nobody lives to tell about them). 

Deadpool kept things pretty quiet, though, snuck around in the dark with his swords drawn, wreaking death and carnage and mayhem where nobody would look to see it. 

And maybe the dark place was in his head, too, and maybe he started looking for some things or people that might be able to kill him, once and for all, but if he didn't find them then nobody but him would know, except maybe a Hulk or two. Or three. Who knew Hulks came in so many different colors? You could probably use Hulks to teach kids the colors of the rainbow, as well as the color gray, which wasn't in the rainbow, but was the color of a Hulk, so therefore Hulks were better than the rainbow. Also, they smashed stuff. Very thoroughly. Did rainbows smash stuff? 

Haha, no. Therefore: Hulks = More Awesome Than Rainbows. And hey, why wasn't there a Black Hulk? Now that you mention it, there seems to be a lack of diversity in the world of Hulks... well, at least there was a She-Hulk. Or two. Wasn't there a red one and a green one? 

Christmas-themed Hulks aside, Deadpool was doing his chatty, amiable, psycho killer gigs in the criminal underworld, and nobody gave a fuck but the people who hired him, and he got paid in copious amounts of money (which wasn't as good as getting paid in attention, but it was acceptable), and he sometimes saw Nate getting talked shit about on the TV, and life was good. 

Well, alright, it wasn't good, but it was alright. Passable. He could get himself out of bed in the morning, most days, even if the only thing that got him out of bed was killing. 

But then he fucked up. He fucked up _really_ bad. Like, mega-super-uber-ultra bad. 

So, he kinda killed this guy, but this guy had been the host to some evil, demonic creature, which then got out of the dead guy and wrought a bunch of havoc and chaos and mayhem and shit, and went on a rampage in New York City, and ate a ton of people, and it was one huge, piping hot mess. 

The Avengers and the Fantastic Four got involved, but this monster was crazy big and crazy powerful, and then it ripped a whole in the timestream and there were a bunch of dinosaurs and Nazis from the past and evil robots from the future, the usual, but the world was in danger and the timestream was screwed so of course Cable and his X-Force showed up, because they dealt with space-time shit. 

And of course Deadpool was in the middle of it all, and he'd gotten infected with one of those alien Venom symbiont in the middle of all the craziness, and Cable had found him, used a flamethrower to burn the symbiote off him, and then told him (read: yelled at him very loudly) that he was the one who caused the monstrous demon thing to get out by killing the guy that he did, so _he_ had to be the one to kill the monster, and Deadpool could only stand there and stare for a few moments because _Nate was looking at him_ and _Nate was talking to him_ and _Nate was paying attention to him_ and suddenly it was a very, very, very good day. 

And so he did what Cable told him to do and killed the demonic monster thing and healed the rip in time, and totally saved the day, even though he'd been the one to endanger it in the first place. 

Oh, and also a lot of civilians got killed... whoops... 

And Cable didn't even say good job for fixing the problem. But Cable _did_ yell at him furiously for several minutes for killing the guy and letting the beast out and messing up the timestream and getting so many innocent people killed, and Wade just basked in it, because, after over a year of nothing, _Nate was finally paying attention to him._

A list composed itself in Wade's head. 

_**How To Get Nate's Attention With 3 Easy Tactics:**_  
1) Endanger the world. A lot.  
2) Fuck with the timestream.  
3) Get civilians killed.

...Not that he _really_ wanted to get innocent civilians killed _(especially not the children!)_... not on _purpose_... doing things on purpose generally got you more hated than doing things on accident.

“I'm disappointed in you, Wade,” Nate said, face grim and serious, but since Nate was never proud of him, and the severe look of anger and disappointed was infinitely better than the non-looks of not-giving-a-fuck, so Wade made a mental note to mark the day as a personal holiday. 

When Deadpool was taken by the authorities, he only put up the barest minimal of an obligatory fight. 

He was locked up in the supervillain penitentiary The Cube (why the _hell_ he was imprisoned in a prison for _alien criminals who committed crimes on Earth_ was _completely_ beyond him—he supposed that the other eight S.H.I.E.L.D. criminal prisons were all full or something—or maybe it was because he _looked_ kind of like an alien?), and was there for three days before he escaped when the prison warden made the huge mistake of attempting to torture him and experiment on him. 

(FYI, evil people: you can't successfully torture or experiment on Deadpool. It will always come back and bite you in the ass. Oh, and you can't get him to stop talking, either. And there's also nothing you can do to keep him from breaking all the bones in your body and then cutting out your duodenum.)

So then, of course, to cover his escape and cause total chaos, Deadpool let out all the supervillain prisoners in The Cube, and slipped away when the superhero teams came to try and put a stop to it. 

A plan was beginning to form in Wade's head. 

If he couldn't be loved, then he would be hated. (If he could get Nate to hate him, then it would mean Nate would _care_ about him.)

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

Nathan had ignored Wade when he'd tried to be better. And then, when Wade had started endangering the world on a mission to get himself a spell to rip a hole in space-time, a mission that took him all around the world, a trail of dead in his wake, Nathan had _chased_ him. Had _fought_ him. Had given him the attention that he'd been craving—so Wade had _kept going._ His mistake with the demon had inspired him to pursue that kind of disaster further, to see how he could recreate that accident _on purpose._

* * *

**_~Then~_ **

* * *

First Deadpool had to figure what the demon had _been,_ and how it had done that timestream thing that it did. 

Which meant visiting some of those churches of the dark religious sects that dealt in all things demonic and hellish. And Deadpool didn't even bother being quiet about it. Maybe if he just killed enough of those guys, some demon creature who usually got sacrifices from them would start paying attention, right? 

Demons weren't the only ones who started paying attention, though, although they had been the first ones. 

Deadpool had started getting really good at killing angry demons that were coming after him. 

DEADPOOL: THE LAST DEMON HUNTER!!!

Yeah, that had a good ring to it. He should call someone up from Marvel and have them get on that. It could be a new series! A new series where he hunted evil-demons with his awesome, beautiful, badass good-demon wife, who was also queen of a city of monsters, and had a kiss that was absolutely to _die_ for. And it would take place in a universe where he was absolutely _not_ hung up on a certain Nathan Dayspring Askani'son (Christopher Charles) 'Priscilla' 'Cable' 'Nate' 'The Traveler' 'The Chosen' 'The Savior' 'Soldier X 'The Askani'son' Summers. 

Geez! That guy had _way_ too many names and aliases! And 'Nathan Winters,' seriously? Who the hell had he thought he was fooling when he used that alias? 

But seriously, if you took all Nate's names and aliases and stacked them up sideways from end to end, they would be taller than _Nate_ was, and _that_ was really saying something. The guy towered over just about everybody but the Hulks. If Nate had a fight with his own name, his name would probably knock him silly. 

And if Nate's name got into a fight with Stryfe's name? Yeah, Nate's name would _kick ass,_ because Stryfe's aliases consisted of a measly Stryfe, The Chaos-Bringer, Scion of the High Lord. 

What a wimp. 

And don't even _get_ Wade started on Stryfe's _armor,_ because that shit was _ridonkulous,_ and probably why Stryfe liked to avoid hand-to-hand combat and just use his powers instead.

But, wow, looking at Stryfe's powers in comparison to Cable's, Stryfe definitely got all the good genes and power-augmentations. Cable really got the short end of the stick, there. 

Although Nate kept beating Stryfe, so Nate obviously got all the brains. And Stryfe didn't have the techno-organic virus, which cut down on his kink factor and subsequent attractiveness. 

And wow, Deadpool really got off on a tangent there, didn't he? And he seemed to have slipped out of his correct timeline (and maybe dimension) a couple times, too. Whoops! 

(Stupid Nate and his stupid T-O that was really sexy but always trying to kill him and his stupid names that could probably kill him if they gained sentience and his stupid clone that was always trying to kill him and his stupid distractingness that was trying to kill Wade and his stupid habit of sacrificing himself whenever possible and then not bothering to tell his best friend that he wasn't actually dead.) 

_Back to the program!_

So Deadpool was hunting demons, and he ended up destroying a bunch of dark churches and starting a gang war between evil religious sects, and _that_ was fun. 

But it got even _more_ fun when Cable and his X-Force team came after him, because then he got to fight demons, pissy mutant teenagers, _and_ Nate, and got to turn the demons against X-Force and X-Force against the demons and sit back with popcorn to watch. 

Only, he couldn't eat popcorn through his mask, and watching a fight was way less fun than participating in one, so Deadpool ditched the popcorn and joined in, fighting both sides and utterly enjoying every second of it. 

“Who's side are yah _on?”_ Cannonball demanded, as Wade cut down a demon that had been giving the biorepellant mutant a hard time, and then proceeded to slam the hilt of his sword against the youth's head. 

“I'm on _my_ side!” Deadpool declared, dodging Cannonball so that the mutant slammed into a demon behind him, before throwing down with Nate and another demon, shooting at them both. “Obviously! I mean, imagine if I was on somebody _else's_ side and _not_ my own, how ridiculous would that be? I'd have to fight _myself!”_

“Wade, _why are you doing this?!”_ Nate demanded, blocking the bullets with his metal arm while continuing to shoot at the demon, which was a huge, red, three-headed, dragon-dog thing. 

Deadpool just grinned behind the mask and waved at him, a second before one of the demon's heads swallowed him. 

_“Wade!”_ Nate had barked, alarmed and confused. 

And then the demon had blown up from the inside, and Deadpool had gone flying straight into the face of a gargoyle-type demon, impaling its eyes while he was at it. 

“A useful thing to note: three-headed demons have only one stomach!” Deadpool said cheerfully, making quick work of the gargoylish thing. “Well, I'm sorry to say I have to leave this delightful party early. I have an appointment to keep, it's imperative that I not be late.” He tapped his right wrist as if he had a watch there. “See ya peeps!” 

He waved at Nate and the X-Force teens and then ducked out of the battle, Nate yelling after him and trying to chase him, but Nate was not so talented in the art of dancing with demons, and he got stuck fighting the demonic crowd while Deadpool slipped away. 

Which was basically how it went, with Deadpool traveling around the world to different darkly mystical locations and X-Force desperately trying to keep up, only managing to arrive late to all the demonic and satanic parties, and the blood baths of evil religious magician minions, and always too late to stop Deadpool from getting whatever information or ancient artifact he needed for his diabolical plans, _bwah ha ha ha ha!_

In his spare time, Deadpool was trying to perfect his evil laugh. However, he could only cackle evilly for about three seconds before he cracked himself up and just started guffawing instead. Which sounded a little crazy and manically joyful, but not that evil, much to his chagrin. 

But this was the most fun he'd had in over a year (since before the Civil War) and he was milking it for all it was worth. 

The best moments were when he was fighting with Nate—against him or alongside him, it didn't really matter. Nate's anger and Nate's frustration and Nate's exasperation—it didn't matter as long as it was directed at _him._ As long as Nate was _looking at him_ and _seeing him_ and _talking to him._

(Gawd, Deadpool loved the way Nate talked with him, how Nate wasn't bothered by his inane banter and mostly seemed to let it wash over him but then also would get caught up on the randomest things, like when they were fighting while riding on the backs of flying demons [yeah, _that_ had been an interesting melee] and Wade declared, “This is like Budapest all over again!” and Nate had actually forgotten how angry he was and paused for a moment to ask curiously: “What happened in Budapest?” But then apparently he'd decided he didn't actually care, and had shot Wade in the throat to keep him from talking [and Wade was pretty sure that counted as a 'shut up,' which meant that Wade had gotten under his skin, which meant that Wade had won]). 

And as long as Nate had nothing more pressing and important to do than chase after Wade. 

Yeah, life was good. So good, in fact, that it deserved an extremely-happy-face emoticon right in the middle of the narration :D

Finally, Wade had found the right evil demon to make a deal with to get timestream-ripping powers (he could only mess with the future, though, not the past), and had headed back to New York City for his grand finale—the more superheroes present, the merrier!

But Nate and his X-Force team had to come anyway, because Wade was going to fuck with the timestream, woohoo! 

(And Nate was the only one he trusted to kill him, anyway.)

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

Nathan had given Wade exactly the wrong message, like unintentionally rewarding a dog for bad behavior by making a fuss. 

These realizations wouldn't have hurt so much if Nathan hadn't had a choice but to ignore Wade—but he knew that he _could_ have done things differently. He could have made time for Wade. 

But what _really_ hurt was that he'd _wanted_ to make time for Wade. 

He'd _wanted_ Wade at his side, but after what had happened between them... he'd thought it was unfair to Wade, to try to drag the merc into his business again. He knew that he'd hurt Wade, both unintentionally and intentionally, so many times. He hadn't wanted to hurt Wade again. 

He hadn't wanted to have Wade close, because he hadn't wanted to have to 'break up' with him again, so to speak. 

He'd cared about Wade, so he'd pushed him away. He'd thought Wade would be better off without him. 

Why had Wade wanted his attention so badly? Why had Wade always _kept coming back,_ no matter what Nathan did? 

Nathan had been disappointed when Wade had made the mistake with the demon, and when he found out the kind of work Deadpool had fallen back into, but what did he expect? Broken things couldn't fix themselves. 

He'd wanted to have Wade around, which was why he _hadn't_ wanted Wade around—Wade was _distracting._ He brought humor to situations Nathan didn't want to find humor in, had turned the acts of fighting and killing into a revel that Nathan didn't want to revel in, had made Nathan care more than he'd thought he could, which was more than he'd wanted to. 

Nathan had been able to kill his own son (Tyler had been filled with so much _rage_ ) but he hadn't been able to bring himself to kill Wade. 

Wade had made everything so difficult. So complicated. So senseless. 

Wade had never made sense, so it made sense that Nathan's feelings for Wade didn't make any sense, either. 

(Love and hate could be so hard to tell apart.) 

Nathan's plane ride had landed in New York, and he was now walking through the city, surveying the damage from the battle. 

Several blocks Staten Island were fenced off (that was another thing—Deadpool had wreaked his chaos in the least densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City, which meant he hadn't been aiming for civilian casualties), and construction workers were already hard at work rebuilding. The debris and wreckage had already been cleared, and already the skeletons of new buildings were growing upwards. 

Fifty-six civilians dead (none of them children), which wasn't bad considering Staten Island's population of 475,000. 

That, plus the seventy-five civilians that died when Wade accidentally let loose that monster in Manhattan (Nathan wasn't quite sure what it meant that Wade caused more civilian deaths by complete accident than when he was purposefully attacking the city) made a total of one-hundred thirty-one civilians that were dead because Nathan hadn't been keeping an eye on the dangerous man that used to be his best friend. One-hundred thirty-one more deaths on Nathan's shoulders, which already carried the burden of tens of thousands. 

And Wade's civilian death-count still put him well below the death-counts of villains who'd attacked New York, like Dr. Doom, the Red Skull, Loki, and Norman Osborn, or corporations like A.I.M., HYDRA, and the Purifiers, or aliens like the Skrulls. 

But unlike them, Wade's goal hadn't been ruling the world, destroying the world, or genocide. Wade hadn't been a _madman,_ for all that the Avengers had always thought he was. 

New York City had had to rebuild so many times after various attacks, the new buildings could now be built so quickly and smoothly that watching bystanders could actually perceive the progress with each passing hour.

Nathan didn't watch that long. He kept walking, because looking at the evidence of destruction made memories of the battle well up in his mind despite his best efforts to crush them down.

* * *

**_~Then~_ **

* * *

By the time Cable and X-Force got there, the battle had already begun. 

Deadpool was standing in the middle of the street and fending off about half Avengers roster, and the area had been cleared of civilians for a few blocks. 

There was a partially bombed-out building nearby, which was probably how Deadpool had gotten their attention. For some reason they hadn't seen fit to call in for backup yet, even though there was no way they'd be able to take Deadpool down alone. 

As X-Force drove up and piled out of their 'borrowed' van (they'd had to 'borrow' a great many vehicles while chasing after Deadpool), they took a moment to survey the battle. 

It was awing how Deadpool was able to fight off Captain America, Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Spider-Man, and Hawkeye, all while keeping up a steady stream of commentary. 

After a few moments to gage tactics (and admire Wade's acrobatic, unpredictable fighting style), Cable barked orders and X-Force rushed in. 

Deadpool flipped over Cannonball, reflected Boom-Boom's blasts with his swords, ducked beneath Warpath's fists, twisted in the air to dodge Domino's bullets and Hawkeye's arrows, and grabbed Captain America's shield, while he was at it, sending the shield careening towards Cable before his feet even hit the ground. 

Cable caught the shield with his left hand, wondering if Wade was teasing him (he knew how much Nathan loved that shield). 

“Ten against one, huh? Don't you think this is a leeeettle unfair?” Deadpool said, spinning his blades to reflect bullets, arrows, and energy blasts. “I better call for my backup! Let's see who answers, shall we? Let me just dial 1-800-BACKUP-F0R-A-DEADP00L...” 

That was when the timestreap ripped open above them audibly, and soldiers and robots from the future streamed out. 

“And it looks like we have... yup, evil laser robots shaped kinda like dolphins—which just shows that dolphins do in fact take over the world when Global Warming causes the oceans to rise and all the humans drown—and we also have soldiers of some kind... _cockroaches!_ Those are cockroach soldiers! Creepy, but probably dangerous, and—oh hey wow, there's a lot of them! Man, the future don't do nothin' by halves, do it? Chimera, chimera!” 

Things exacerbated quickly, after that. 

The rest of the Avengers were called onto the scene, as well as the Fantastic Four, all of them trying to contain the situation, while X-Force tried to stop Deadpool. 

Though when the Sentinels arrived and started going after the mutants, X-Force didn't have much choice but to defend themselves. 

Some of the human-cockroach hybrid soldiers had flying scooters, and Deadpool leaped up onto one as it zoomed by, waving at Cable as he zoomed off. 

Cable stole another flying scooter from one of the cockroach soldiers and chased after him through the city. 

Buildings were already toppling, crashing and burning. The Hulk was throwing down with a more grotesque, yellow Hulk-looking thing from the future that had spines down its back. Iron Man was flying through the city with a crowd of robots on his tail. Everywhere superheroes were battling with soldiers, robots, and monsters from the future, who were also fighting each other, and the future armies just kept coming. It was chaos. Pure, utter chaos. 

Cable glanced back just in time to see Apocalypse and his Horsemen descend from the space-time tear (Spider-Man immediately started fighting and making fun of his Pestilence counterpart), and he cursed under his breath before focusing his attention back on chasing after Deadpool, firing at him and trying to knock him out of the sky. 

Deadpool had been mostly forgotten by the other heroes, who were too busy trying to fight off the futures that were impending on the present. Doctor Strange and Mr. Fantastic were trying to close the timestream tear, but they were at a loss. 

Only X-Force knew that killing Deadpool was the only way to close the tear, and only Cable had the serum. (The timestream was screaming in his head.) 

When Cable finally hit the engine of Deadpool's flying scooter, the mercenary leapt off onto the roof of a skyscraper, landing and rolling back up to his feet, swords drawn in the same action. 

“Whatcha waitin' for, Priscilla?” Deadpool greeted as Cable landed his flying scooter a few feet away. 

“It doesn't have to be this way,” Cable ground out as he drew his Psimitar from his back.

“I know,” Deadpool grinned, lunging. Metal clashed against metal. “Hey, I never actually told you what happened in Budapest, did I? So what happened was—”

Their fight was so much like the sparring sessions they used to have back in Providence that the memories hurt Cable more than Deadpool's physical blows. 

And Deadpool's physical blows _hurt._

* * *

**_~Now~_ **

* * *

There was definitely a good reason why Deadpool was one of the best mercenaries on Earth—if not _the_ best, depending on whether or not you discounted points for being unprofessional and unorthodox. But he was _good_ at what he did. 

He was a killer, through and through. (But so was Nathan—maybe that was why they were so well-matched, killer instinct braced against killer instinct.) 

The dead were just numbers, when lumped together. 

Every person that had had a family member or friend die to Wade's antics in New York City would feel their loss keenly, but to everyone else the dead were just more casualties of a supervillain attack. Nothing more than numbers. The dead were faceless to all those who hadn't known them. 

For Nathan, Wade's death was the only one that hurt. The only one that even mattered, maybe. 

(He never could bring himself to care much about the deaths he'd caused, despite how he knew he should—the only thing he cared about was how it affected _him._ Sometimes he felt guilty that he didn't feel awful about the lives that he'd ended, and the people that had been hurt by the ending of those lives, and he suspected that Wade had often felt the same way.) 

He missed Wade. 

(He missed being able to turn and have Wade right there next to him. He missed the trust that Wade had had in him, and the way that he'd been able to trust Wade. He missed Wade's voice, and the things Wade said, and the way Wade made him laugh. He missed the way Wade looked at him. He missed how comfortable he felt around Wade. He missed the way Wade annoyed the hell out of people. He even missed Wade's inherent violence and bloodlust.)

It still felt strange to admit that to himself, and it surprised him how much the sentiment kept creeping up on him. 

There was a chimichanga stand in the park Nathan was walking through, and he found himself halting, staring at the sign and reading the word over and over again, a frown on his face. 

But it wasn't the sign that made him frown, nor the memories of Wade repeating the word 'chimichanga' over and over again. No, he was frowning at the clenching feeling in his chest around what seemed to be a Wade-shaped hole. 

It wasn't even the fact that he _did_ miss Wade that was making him frown, though—it was the fact that the feeling was so _familiar._

And it was only then that he realized he'd been missing Wade for a long time—since Providence had sunk, and he'd sacrificed himself only to survive. 

He hadn't told Wade he was alive—he though it would be better if Wade didn't know. Maybe then the mercenary would be able to move on with is life. He'd had a good thing going at Agency X. He hadn't needed Nathan, and Nathan hadn't needed him. 

And yet, they'd both missed each other. Nathan just hadn't realized that he was missing Wade that entire time. 

It was only clear to him now because the hole in his chest had been absent when he'd been fighting Wade and trying to prevent him from unleashing demons on the world and damaging the timestream. But the hole had opened back up as soon as the life had left Wade's eyes, and it had yawned wider than before, as there was no mollifying it with thoughts that there would be a _later_. That he could always talk to Wade _later_ because Wade would _always_ be there. 

When he'd realized Wade was succeeding in his plan and that the only way to stop him would be to kill him (permanently, because if he came back to life then the tear in space-time would open right back up), he hadn't hesitated in trying to find a way. 

He knew Wade would have to be cured of the healing factor (and subsequently the cancer) in order for him to stay dead, so he'd contacted and hired a detective to find some of Wade's DNA and a scientist to make the cure. 

He hadn't hesitated to have the cure made, and he carried it on his person for when he had to use it—he'd just hoped that he wouldn't have to. He'd hoped he would be able to convince Wade to stop before it got to that. 

But Wade had been too far gone (having too much fun), and Nathan had failed to see it for what it was. (He should have been able to tell that Wade was doing it all for attention—Wade had been grinning and laughing and cheerful, and Nathan had thought he was using that as his usual mask to cover up his _true_ emotions, but he _wasn't_ —it was so hard to tell with Wade, what was a mask and what wasn't. Sometimes he suspected even _Wade_ couldn't tell.) 

He hadn't hesitated to inject Wade with the serum, but he had hesitated to kill him. He'd thought, foolishly, that maybe, if Wade was cured, he would come to his senses. 

Nathan had been so asinine. It seemed that he always was, whenever Wade was concerned. Wade was an enigma that defied understanding, but Nathan kept trying to understand him, only to continually get everything wrong. And that... _hurt,_ to realize. 

On a whim of sentimentality, Nathan had bought a chimichanga from the stand (he'd almost choked on the word when ordering), and now he leaned on a tree in the shade, picking the deep-fried burrito apart but not really eating it. Not that he hadn't tried it, but Wade had been right when he'd said that chimichangas were more fun to say than they were to eat. 

Nathan threw the chimichanga away and kept walking, hands in the pockets of his coat, wondering how it was he managed to destroy everything that he cared about it. 

Life wasn't fair, he knew, but he couldn't help being jealous of Wade. Wade, who shouldn't have been able to die, had died before Nathan. Nathan, who kept trying to get himself killed. Great Mother, he'd been ready to die so many times. 

It seemed so strange now that Wade was _dead,_ and that he was supposed to _stay_ dead. 

And maybe that was why Nathan couldn't bring himself to have Wade's body cremated. Because he couldn't shake the hope that maybe, _maybe_ Wade would somehow come back.

* * *

**_~Now, in Canada, graveyard~_ **

* * *

In Western Canada, in a coffin six feet underground beneath the grave marked 'Keith Goodchild,' there was a heartbeat. 

A single heartbeat, and then nothing. Not even a blip of brain activity. 

But the corpse's skin started shifting.

* * *

**_~Now, in NYC~_ **

* * *

The Askani had a phrase: What is... _is._

It was a fancy way of saying that shit happens—when it does, you delt with the situation. You didn't waste time over why it happened, or if you could have done things differently. Thinking like that got you killed. 

Nathan had already spent too many hours thinking about Wade. The past was the past, and he needed to stop thinking about it, stop dwelling. It wasn't healthy, and it wasn't _him._ (Wade always threw him off his game.) 

But Nathan was done now. Wade was gone, and couldn't bother him anymore—he couldn't even feel guilty, because death was what Wade had _wanted._

So now it was finally time to do what he came to New York to do in the first place. (What, you didn't _actually_ think that _Nathan Summers_ just came to New York City to _mourn,_ did you?) 

His plane flight had arrived early, and he'd had time to kill (and he _hhated_ having to kill time, so of course Wade had helped him kill it, and without Nathan's permission) before his meeting with a potential new X-Force member. 

He had to get his timing just right in order to intercept Fantomex at the right moment in his thieving mission, which Fantomex had no idea that Cable knew about it. 

Nathan hailed a cab and gave directions for a street in Manhattan not too far from Avengers Tower. He'd get out and walk the rest of the way, make sure that Fantomex was able to steal from the Avengers and get out of the building only to find himself surrounded by angry Avengers, and then Cable would help him out, and once they were safely away, Cable would offer him a spot on his X-Force team. 

He might have to get his new recruit, Psylocke, to help him convince Fantomex, but he knew Fantomex could be convinced. 

And with his X-Force team, he knew he'd be too busy to have time to think about Wade. 

And that was for the best.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not even really sure how to feel about this story... I mean, what happens is neither Wade nor Nathan's sole faults, really... they're just both kinda really fucked :'/ 
> 
> Anybody enjoy this story enough that you want to see the sequel? Because I also wrote a sequel to this during the summer. And then I wrote a sequel to that. And a sequel to that. And a sequel to that. And so on, so that I now have seven additional stories after this story arc, and plans for five more stories after those (that I don't know if I'll ever be able to get around to writing). 
> 
> So. Anyone want to see more of this story arc? Because I honestly can't tell whether this is shit or not.


End file.
